Zuckerberg announces the big Facebook 'surprise'

Incidentally, on May 10 this year, Microsoft agreed to pay $8.5 billion to buy Skype.

Known for unified communication (integration of real-time communication services such as chat, internet telephony and video conferencing) products, Microsoft is said to have plans to integrate Skype technology with its products.

Zuckerberg announces the big Facebook 'surprise'

With the Facebook-Skype video chat, there will be an intense battle for online users.

On the one hand will be Google with its audio and video chat product Google+, Chrome browser, Google Docs and search offerings.

On the other hand, Facebook will have a video chat with Skype, while Microsoft will have a social search offering (it partnered with Facebook for this last October), Office 365 to battle Google Docs, Bing search engine and unified communication products.

Zuckerberg announces the big Facebook 'surprise'

Amanjot Johal, a Sydney-based consultant, tweeted, "After using Google+, Twitter, Facebook, Skype and Apple Facetime, I can say that Google has the killer feature."

Others like Freida Paul updated their Facebook status saying, "It will be difficult to predict how many of Facebook's 500 million (active) users will switch to Google+. Nevertheless, there are enough innovative ideas built into Google+ that Facebook has no choice but to respond."

Zuckerberg announces the big Facebook 'surprise'

Rajiv Dingra, CEO, WATConsult, says: "Video was the only thing missing from Facebook's armour when it came to peer to peer interaction services."

Facebook leads the social media networking global pack with nearly 750 million users (500 million are active), followed by LinkedIn (100 million), Twitter (75 million), Orkut (100 million, most of them in Brazil and India) and MySpace (30 million).

Google's earlier attempts in the social networking space have met with feeble success.